is the color of blood.
The Cruel Ivy Killer understood this better than any of us.
—Daisy Whitaker, “Cruelty in Color”
The sky was bleeding.
That was what it looked like to Violet. Like red rain, crying from the sky and offering its embrace to her. It was beautiful, and she nearly forgot the rage that led her there. The diving hedron all wore pale red crystals, glittering in what light there was like stained glass. There were so many of them that they flowed like water, currents of the monsters obstructing her view of her allies.
There were more of them than anyone could have predicted. More than the group had prepared for, when they’d made what plans they could. Violet understood Stephanie’s cowardice. Why she was willing to abandon so many people to this and simply run. It would be a daunting task to fight them. It was the flip of a coin whether anyone would survive at all, Violet realized.
But she didn’t regret her choice. The risk she’d take by intentionally attracting the swarm was validated by three things. The first was the lightning. While Violet couldn’t spot her allies through the swarm, she knew where they were. Red crystal lit with an electric glow nearly every second, screeching bats magnifying the visuals of the spell. The lightning connected dozens of monsters at a time, killing anything close in an instant. It was like watching a light show through baroque glass, yellow magic spreading through the red wave like visible blood veins.
It was violence as art. There were other spells. The wailing of the banshee spells couldn’t be missed, the bat hedron responding with particular irritation to them even when they weren’t hit. Any time one of Aubrey’s spells screamed through the open air, the monsters rippled away from it.
Flashes of fire and heat radiated from the same direction as the screaming, identifying Kiera’s magic. The heat waves were visible through the crystal, if not the flesh, and the beasts near Violet’s new friends seemed to waver like a desert mirage. Even Guy could be heard, his yells always preceding the strangely familiar squelch of ripping meat. His yells were not all of pain, however, and Violet suspected he was doing his best to crush as many of the monsters as possible.
There was brilliant magic and aesthetic violence all around her, but none so grand as the lightning. There were thousands of hedron, but this meant they were individually weak. And the lightning was slaughtering hedron in droves. Violet had no doubt that, without Stephanie desperately fighting alongside them, everyone left behind would be dead. With the lancer, she decided they all had at least a fifty percent chance of survival.
The second validation was the beauty. She couldn’t explain it, but she had never been affected by anything like she was by these monsters in the air. The bleeding sky drowned her, and she felt in it a fire she’d never been able to light before. Even if she died there, a victim of her own hubris, it would nearly feel worth it just for the final experience. It was strangely serene for her, in the eye of that monstrous swarm. Like the only things that mattered were color and her capacity to enjoy it.
And finally, she was validated by the hedron’s behavior. Violet wanted to give her new friends the best chance at surviving. That was true, and that was what she had done. Stephanie was killing nearly three times as many bats as the rest of the group together. If she focused entirely on the thought of Kiera, she could even convince herself that saving her friends was her primary motivation. But part of the reason she was willing to take the risk was her experience with the moose before.
After she’d found her calling, it had ignored her. At least until she’d given it a reason not to. On their way home to Roseville, hedron had only attacked Stephanie. And there, in the middle of a swarm of monsters as thick as flesh, she was again left entirely alone. Crying, and killing, and tearing. Everyone around her was fighting for their lives. The monsters around her were desperate to eat. It was a struggle for blood from every living thing for miles. But Violet was exempt.
She took a step forward, then back. Two steps forward, and one to the side. She moved her feet to a dance she’d learned as a child, spinning in place and holding her arms up for a phantom partner. The moose had ignored her, but the bats were different. They avoided her. As she moved, so did they. As she took a step, they formed around her, leaving her entirely unscathed.
Whatever her choice had been, she never would have been in danger. She didn’t need to flee with a woman she hated. She didn’t need to lose a new friend who liked to read. She didn’t have to live with that guilt, however short-lived the emotion usually was to her. She kept the lightning mage exactly where she needed her, and she bought the others a chance at survival. Above all, she’d done as much with no risk to her own safety.
Among all the chaos, Violet was in control. It tasted like ambrosia on her smiling lips. She couldn’t help it. She wanted her new friends to live, yes. But if they didn’t, Violet would still be in control. She’d still have out-played Stephanie, and that made her grin before she even realized it. She had won, in a way, and she was left with only a few remaining obstacles. Whichever way the fight went, she had to do something.
Either everyone else was going to lose, and she should try something to help, or they were going to win. If they did, they would be more than a little curious why Violet was unscathed. And Stephanie would likely realize that Violet had betrayed her offer, at least to some extent. Perhaps the lancer wouldn’t intuit the full reality, but she would ask questions. Even if she didn’t, Violet would remain dangerous just for having heard the offer. Stephanie wouldn’t want any reports of her cowardice making it to her superiors.
Violet needed to handle the woman sooner rather than later.
She glanced between the massive flashes of lightning and the simmering heat waves. The other three students together were doing a fraction of the damage Stephanie was, and Violet had a choice to make. She could prioritize helping Kiera and Guy, or she could try to use the cover of the attack to kill Stephanie. Helping her friends would certainly be easiest. The way the bats moved around and avoided her, she thought she might be able to protect at least one of them just by holding them. If not that, then she could herd them into one of Aubrey’s screams, or give anyone struggling a chance to regain their footing.
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Conversely, the nature of Stephanie’s “Chain Lightning” talent made her dangerous to approach. Violet suspected the talent could be controlled to avoid friendly fire, but she didn’t trust the panicked lancer to do so. Getting too close to her could result in catching an attack meant for the hedron. After all that, Violet would have to be very lucky to overpower her, even with the element of surprise. The magnitude of her spells was evidence enough of that.
She took a step toward the students, paused, took a second step, and paused again. Because, of course, using the hedron’s fear of her to help the other students would mean revealing that she was safe from attack. The truth was, such knowledge was a literal form of power she could exert, and sharing it would be handing over control she didn’t have to. Violet simply didn’t care about anyone enough to do that. She would help if she could, because she did like at least two of them. But liking someone wasn’t enough. She knew how sharp but short the guilt of risking them would be. She didn’t have any flashy spells. She had a crystal scythe, likely of a higher degree than any of the pale red hedron, but she had no particular skill with it. Talents granted magic, but not inherent knowledge of combat. In a swarm like this, she could barely make a dent with her current abilities and skills.
So she decided to wait. And to watch. She would help if she saw something she could safely do. And she watched, and waited, and watched. One minute, then two, then five, ten, and fifteen. As time passed, Violet remained safe. The wave of crystal began to thin, but the magic was slowing at the same time. The hedron were losing, but everyone was exhausted. It was still uncertain which group would ultimately come out alive. Worse, Violet was starting to catch glimpses through the screeching bats. Glimpses of the others, bloodied and fighting. She couldn’t wait any longer, or she’d be spotted, and she’d have questions to answer.
Her eyes locked curiously on one bat which was, at least for the moment, flying in her direction. The moose had attacked when its nest was in danger, and when it was in danger. She wondered what the bats would do in the same circumstance. Would they all swarm her? That was what they were to everyone else, but… She sighed. The life she had chosen wasn’t one she could succeed in if she never took any risks. She could play things safe and leave other people in control, or she could gamble on a chance to grab the reins. She gripped her scythe in both hands and swung it in the direction of the approaching hedron. It was such a direct movement that she’d have needed to miss intentionally. The crystal on the hedron cracked and shattered under Violet’s blade, the bat splitting in two in the air and falling to the ground.
It had been easy. The issue was how thickly the beasts were packed together. There was no way to swing at the near wall of beasts surrounding her and only hit one of them. Her scythe cut at and injured nearly a dozen hedron together. Every injured bat that survived descended on her at once. Claws of crystal extended from the monster’s toes, tearing through Violet’s clothing and flesh. Unnaturally long fangs bit and cut, drawing lines of blood all across Violet’s body.
Violet’s grin grew wider.
Because only the hedron she had either hit or narrowly missed had attacked her. Her constitution was low at 47, but a death by a thousand papercuts would never come when she was facing barely a dozen enemies. She could easily withstand the onslaught, and the rest of the monsters continued to fear her. It was exactly what she’d hoped for. Claws ripped into her jeans, teeth biting at her neck. As a hedron tore at her cheek, she pulled out her crystal knife and stabbed it in the air before it could touch her eyes. It was surprisingly easy, her new dexterity surpassing that of the animal she was attacking.
She decided to rely entirely on her knife, dropping the unwieldy scythe at her feet. She was irritated that such an unruly weapon always formed. It seemed to be the default, if she chose to create a weapon without specifically picturing what she wanted. That didn’t matter at the moment. Either way, it dissolved as a much simpler knife formed in her now-free hand. She didn’t fight back in earnest just yet. Instead, she kept any arteries or vitals protected as she allowed her few enemies to wound her. She grit her teeth, determined to appear at least as wounded as everyone else. It was unpleasant, but it was worth the integrity of her secrets. The ripped clothing and messy blood upset her far more than the pain, in any case.
She allowed the abuse for several minutes, batting the monsters away from her eyes and throat repeatedly. Until, finally, her soaked clothing was stained with enough red to avoid any suspicion. As soon as she judged this was the case, she snapped her hand in front of her face, dropping a knife and catching a hedron in mid-air. Her new agility and dexterity felt amazing. She carefully stabbed her other knife between two crystals on the struggling bat’s back. She dug slowly toward its heart as the unique howl of a suffering animal assaulted her ears and hot blood decorated her face. They were easy to slaughter. Like paper mache that squealed. She didn’t particularly enjoy it. If anything, the task was tedious, especially with the new aches and pains she’d earned to avoid suspicion. No longer smiling, she wore a cold, blank face as she tore the hedron on her apart one by one.
Finally, they were actually thinning, as slow and weak as the spells around her had grown. As she stepped forward, she caught a new hedron from the air. She threw it to the ground and stomping on it with one boot as she finally felt safe approaching the rest. She could see them consistently now. Guy was as bruised and bloody as Violet. Stephanie was on her own, maybe thirty feet from the rest, largely obscured by mist where the hedron finally revealed her. But Violet could see one thing. She could see the woman’s eyes, glowing yellow with dying lightning as she continued to fight. They landed on Violet’s, even through every obstacle, and they looked terrified.
Violet had thought she’d look furious. She’d expected a glare, or even hurt. But the woman was only afraid. This was what had tried to kill Violet before, and it was what had wanted to murder the students only a half hour earlier. Naked, unadulterated fear. A powerful emotion that could be so violent in the hands of the more powerful. Violet’s anger returned. Her fury at the woman’s helplessness. Stephanie was a category yellow. More powerful than nearly anyone in Roseville. Stronger than many people in smaller towns ever had a hope of becoming. And she was so… pathetic. She was this sad and weak in her power, and still she had the audacity to try and dictate Violet’s life and death.
Violet realized in the brief moment when their eyes met—what this was really about for her. Stephanie had decided Violet would die, and that deserved punishment. But later, the lancer had decided Violet would be allowed to live, as everyone else died. Like it was a gift. Like a favor. Like it was Stephanie’s fucking call either way. They were the same damn thing. Stephanie thought she could rule Violet’s life. She could take it, give it, or ignore it. The thought boiled in Violet’s stomach with such violence that she felt the need to move. To flex her arms and to destroy. She crushed another hedron between her palms, the crystal cutting into her hands in painful splinters as she did. She didn’t care. The pain felt like action, and the action felt like control.
I wish every hedron left would just charge her all at once. I wish they would abandon the thought of eating and simply try to kill. I want them to tear, and chew, and tell her exactly who is alive at whose pleasure, Violet thought, willing the remaining monsters to abandon the students and make a suicide run at the yellow lancer. As soon as she finished the thought, and much to her surprise…
They did.
- I would really like to make the top 7 RS so I'll be on the front page even for free members.
- I realized these will be more effective once you have all had the chance to see one, so having one just a bit earlier would be for the best. A reminder, the topic of this bonus chapter is decided by readers and popular vote! (Some restrictions apply. I can't post fanfic on a story not marked as as such, not without the author's permission. Violet is underage so I won't do smut, etc. Things like that. More details when the milestone is reached.)
- That means that, having passed 1k followers today, we are halfway to the first! It also means there will be two bonus chapters in prose before the webtoon bonus chapter.
And for the rest of you who have already faithfully followed... go now, and spread the good word. Violet will not save you from your sins, but she will look cute while punishing you for them.
Here are the current goals and rewards, as well as how close we were to each at 10:40 AM CST on the day this chapter was published.
Click Description to learn more about each!
6k - 15k Bonus Chapter – 2,000 Followers
1,006 / 2,000
Description
Starting at 2,000 followers, I will write a bonus chapter between 6k - 15k in length every 2k followers. This may be a side character, this may be an AU, or anything else. Who decides? You do! When a milestone is reached, I will ask for suggestions and put up a poll of the most popular ones!
Webtoon Chapter – 6,000 Followers
1,006 / 6,000
Description
This is also a bonus chapter, but I will have it commissioned as a fully illustrated webtoon!
Spin-Off Novel – 15,000 Followers
1,006 / 15,000
Description
I will write a novel of at least 120k words focusing on Kiera, our resident fox girl!
Visual Novel – 20,000 Followers
1,006 / 20,000
Description
I will commission art for and develop a full length (and free to play) Cruel Violet visual novel.